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1. NIH R&D in FY 2007 Senate Appropriations -Table
2. Dept. of Health and Human Services R&D in FY 2007 Senate Appropriations PDF
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R&D in the FY 2007 Budget Page
Supplemental
Materials: "House Proposes
Flat NIH Budget," AAAS R&D Funding Update on R&D in FY 2007 House
NIH Appropriations "NIH Budget
Remains Flat in 2007," AAAS R&D Funding Update on R&D in the
FY 2007 NIH Budget AAAS Analysis
of R&D in the FY 2007 Budget -
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The Senate would add $201 million to the Bush Administration’s request for
the National Institutes of Health (NIH), enough to keep NIH institute and center
budgets flat instead of declining for the second year in a row. After falling
for the first time since 1970 in 2006, the 2007 Senate appropriation would be
a 0.7 percent increase for a total NIH budget of $28.8 billion (see Table
1). -
The modest Senate increase would keep NIH well behind its own calculations of
biomedical research inflation, estimated at 4.1 percent this year and 3.8 percent
in 2007. The NIH budget would fall 10 percent from 2004 to 2007 based on these
calculations, and nearly 5 percent based on economy-wide inflation. -
All of NIH’s IC’s would see their funding increase
between 0 and 1 percent, except for the Senate’s endorsement of a large proposed
increase for the Office of the Director (OD). The OD budget would climb 30 percent
or $160 million to reach $688 million in the Senate plan, to fund increases for
the two NIH priorities of biodefense R&D and the
NIH Roadmap for Biomedical Research. -
NIH, the House, and now the Senate have all endorsed an NIH biodefense
investment of $1.9 billion in FY 2007, an increase of $110 million or 6.2 percent
in an otherwise lean NIH budget. The entire increase would go to OD for its Advanced
Development fund (up $110 million to $160 million) to develop biodefense countermeasures. Other NIH biodefense
funding, mostly in NIAID, would remain flat. Funding for the other key NIH priority,
the NIH Roadmap, would increase dramatically by $113 million or 34.4 percent to
$443 million in 2007. - NIH R&D funding, 97
percent of the total NIH budget except for training and some overhead costs, would
gain $201 million or 0.7 percent to $28.0 billion (see Table
1) in the Senate appropriation. -
R&D in the other Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) agencies combined
would fall 3 percent to $1.3 billion (see Table 2).
NIH R&D in FY 2007 Senate Appropriations On
July 20, the Senate Appropriations Committee approved its version of the FY 2007
Labor-HHS appropriations bill (S 3708), which provides funding for the Departments
of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education. The bill funds R&D in
the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), including the National Institutes
of Health (NIH). The House drafted its own version of the bill in June, but the
House leadership has delayed a House vote on the bill until well into the fall.
The full Senate is also unlikely to take up its version until the fall, leaving
these appropriations in draft form for the next few months. While the House would approve NIH’s request
calling for nearly all of NIH’s institutes and centers’
budgets to fall for the second year in a row, the Senate would add $201 million
to the request to allow all NIH’s IC’s to at least receive
flat funding in 2007. The Senate’s total appropriation for NIH would be $28.8
billion, $201 million or 0.7 percent above this year’s funding level (see Table
1). NIH classifies 97 percent of its budget as R&D, including R&D
facilities. (The remainder is for overhead costs and research training.)
NIH R&D would total $28.0 billion next year in the Senate bill, again
a 0.7 percent increase, in contrast to a slight cut in the House plan. (For details
of the request for NIH, see Chapter 8 of AAAS
Report XXXI: R&D FY 2007 or the Feb. 23 R&D
Funding Update; for details of House appropriations for NIH, see the June
16 R&D Funding Update.) 
Figure
1. (click on the image for PDF)
After
several years of gains, 2007 would be the third year in a row that NIH would lag
behind inflation in the economy as a whole, projected at 2.2 percent next
year (see Figure 1). The 2007 NIH Senate appropriation would be nearly 5 percent
below the 2004 peak after adjusting for inflation. But NIH would fall even further
behind in its own calculations of biomedical research inflation. NIH calculates
a Biomedical Research and Development Price Index (BRDPI), an inflation index
for goods and services purchased by the NIH budget. Recently, NIH projected the
BRDPI increase for FY 2007 to be 3.8 percent after a 4.1 percent increase in 2006.
In recent years, the BRDPI inflation rate has outpaced the economy-wide inflation
rate by roughly 2 percent a year. Using BRDPI, the 2007 Senate appropriation would
leave NIH with 10 percent less than the 2004 budget in biomedical inflation-adjusted
terms. (AAAS and the federal government generally use the economy-wide GDP deflator
to adjust R&D dollars for inflation.) NIH Institutes in the FY 2007 Senate Appropriation The
NIH budget is actually appropriated in 26 separate budget accounts, roughly corresponding
to NIH’s institutes and centers (IC’s; see Table
1). There are 20 institutes with separate budgets, along with four centers,
an Office of the Director (OD), and a Buildings and Facilities account. There
are three other centers that are not separately budgeted. In
the FY 2007 Senate appropriation, all the IC’s would see small funding increases
between 0 and 1 percent, well behind inflation. Only the Office of the Director
would get a large increase. But the Senate appropriation would be a slight improvement
over the House and NIH plans calling for all but three IC’s to see their budgets
fall for the second year in a row. The Senate appropriation would still leave
most IC budgets below their 2005 levels. 
Figure
2. (click on the image for PDF) Only
the Office of the Director (OD) would see its budget increase significantly in
2007. The Senate would add $20 million to an already-generous request to bring
the OD budget to $688 million, a 30 percent increase over this year after a similar
increase in 2006. In both 2006 and 2007, the bulk of the increases would go to
biodefense and other terrorism research. In 2006, OD takes
over responsibility for a $47.5 million radiological and nuclear countermeasures
portfolio from the Office of the HHS Secretary, and a $50 million biodefense
countermeasures development fund from NIAID. The 2007 budget would add $110 million
in new funds for the Advanced Development fund for biodefense
countermeasures, bringing total OD investment to $160 million. The remaining increase
would go to expand the NIH Roadmap for Medical Research (see below). Because
of stagnant and declining funding in recent budgets and now for 2007, all NIH
IC’s, except the Office of the Director, have lost ground significantly in inflation-adjusted
terms (see Figure 2). Most institute budgets peaked in 2004 and have declined
since then. The largest institute, the National Cancer Institute (NCI), would
barely stay even at $4.8 billion in the Senate plan (up 0.1 percent). After factoring
in (economy-wide) inflation, the NCI budget would be 6 percent below the 2004
funding level. The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) would have
$2.9 billion in 2007, a 5.6 percent inflation-adjusted loss compared to 2004.
The other NIH institutes would see similar losses. Even NIAID, which received
billions of dollars in additional funds in the aftermath of the fall 2001 anthrax
attacks to become the second-largest NIH institute, has lost ground in more recent
years with a $4.4 billion 2007 Senate appropriation, 5.1 percent below its 2004
budget in real terms. (The losses would be even greater if calculated with the
biomedical research BRDPI inflation index.) The Office of the Director budget
would double in real terms between 2004 and 2007 if the Senate appropriation prevails.
The Senate bill would
be mostly free of binding instructions for NIH on how to spend its funds, unlike
the House bill. In a rare legally binding designation of funds, the House bill
would mandate $69 million for the National Children’s Study in 2007 in a reaction
against NIH’s proposal to eliminate funding. The multi-year
study in the National Institute of Child Health and Development (NICHD) is currently
in its early stages, but NIH proposed to end further work because of its tight
budget situation and looming future costs of enrolling 100,000 children in the
long-term study. The Senate bill does not mention the study, nor does it provide
additional funds for NICHD. The
Senate bill is also silent on whether NIH-funded researchers should be required
to make their research papers freely accessible. The House version of the bill
would require NIH-funded researchers to submit electronic versions of their final
published research papers to NIH as soon as possible but no later than 12 months
after publication, so that NIH-funded research results can be freely accessible
to the public in NIH’s PubMed
Central digital archive. The legally binding language follows non-binding report
language in previous appropriations bills calling on NIH to make PubMed Central a central, open-access repository for all NIH-funded
research findings. In response to the earlier language, NIH released a policy
last year calling on all NIH-funded researchers to submit their manuscripts to
PubMed Central after publication, but made submission
voluntary. Apparently frustrated by the low percentages of researchers who have
done so, House appropriators would make submission within a year of publication
mandatory. It is unclear whether the House language will survive in the final
Labor-HHS bill. NIH Funding Mechanisms From
funding an average of 1 out of 3 grant applications earlier in the decade, NIH
now expects to fund fewer than 1 in 5 applications. NIH
projects a decline in the success rate for new grant applications for the sixth
year in a row to 19 percent in 2006 and 2007, down steeply from a high of 32
percent in FY 2001 because recent surges in the number of applications have far
outpaced the number of grants awarded. Several NIH institutes would see success
rates well below the 19 percent NIH-wide average. The largest National Cancer
Institute projects a decline to 16 percent in the 2007 budget. NIH Priority Areas NIH
continues to expand funding for clinical research, high-risk basic research, new
research tools, and multidisciplinary collaborative research in the NIH Roadmap for Biomedical Research. The total roadmap, after increasing
from $240 million to $329 million within a declining total NIH budget in 2006,
would increase another $113 million or 34.4 percent to $443 million in 2007 in
the request and both the House and Senate appropriations. The Roadmap would continue
to be managed in the Office of the Director, and OD would provide the largest
single contribution with $111 million in 2007 (up 35 percent). The remaining Roadmap
funds would come from a transfer of 1.2 percent of each IC’s budget (up from 0.9
percent in 2006), totaling $332 million (up 34 percent). Various parts of the
Roadmap are then parceled out for selected IC’s to administer. Biodefense R&D continues to be the other expanding priority in the NIH portfolio.
NIH would devote $1.9 billion for biodefense R&D
in FY 2007, up $110 million or 6.2 percent from the current year. The entire $110
million increase would go to the Advanced Development fund in the Office of the
Director (OD). The fund, which OD inherited from NIAID in 2006 at a level of $50
million, would increase to $160 million to develop new biodefense countermeasures which could eventually wind up
in the Strategic National Stockpile for use after a terrorist attack. The additional
funds would go primarily toward vaccines and treatments for anthrax and smallpox.
Of the remaining biodefense portfolio, all except a
small construction investment would go to competitively awarded research grants
and contracts, mostly from NIAID. In addition to the biodefense investment, NIH OD would also receive $96 million
for an R&D program on radiological and nuclear countermeasures. NIH
would fund $114 million in R&D facilities and capital equipment in FY 2007,
down slightly from the current year. Much of this funding comes from the Buildings
and Facilities account, which would remain at $81 million in the House appropriation
for 2007. The B&F appropriation funds intramural construction at NIH facilities,
while in the NIAID appropriation there would be $25 million for extramural biodefense construction grants to finish several laboratories
around the country. R&D in Other HHS Agencies Total
R&D in the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) would be $29.3 billion
in FY 2007 under the Senate Labor-HHS bill, a slight increase of 0.5 percent after
a cut in 2007 (see Table 2). NIH dominates the HHS
R&D portfolio, but the rest of HHS (excluding NIH) would fund a still-substantial
$1.3 billion in R&D in FY 2007, a cut of 3.0 percent. Impacts
of the NIH R&D Portfolio Although
Senate appropriators tried to add more money to the NIH request, an extremely
tight domestic spending allocation and steep proposed cuts in other parts of the
Labor-HHS bill limited their generosity to a relatively modest $201 million add-on
for NIH. The 2007 Senate appropriation, although more generous than the House,
would still be a disappointment to biomedical research advocates who had hoped
that the Senate could add funds to a flat 2007 request. Both the House and Senate
appropriations would leave NIH with less money in real terms than in 2003, signaling
a retreat from the funding levels reached in the NIH doubling campaign. NIH alone now accounts for two-thirds of all federal support for R&D
in colleges and universities. A
majority of NIH R&D funds go
to colleges and universities; because of the size of the NIH budget in comparison
to other federal agencies, NIH is the dominant funding source for nearly all colleges
and universities with medical schools. NIH’s intramural laboratories, mostly in Maryland,
perform a fifth of total NIH R&D. Nearly 17 percent of NIH R&D goes to
independent nonprofit institutions, including non-university research hospitals
and medical research foundations; NIH provides two-thirds of all federal R&D
funds to nonprofits. Because of budget cuts, universities and colleges and medically
oriented nonprofits can expect falling federal R&D support in FY 2006 and
2007 after many years of gains. Outlook and Next Steps The
future of both the House and Senate versions of the Labor-HHS bill are in limbo.
Although both are ready for floor debate and eventual approval, Republican congressional
leaders are wary of debating the bill before the November elections because of
the tensions this bill causes each year between fiscal conservatives and Republican
moderates, one group calling for steep cuts in its health and education programs
and the other calling for billions in additional funding. Democratic attempts
to attach a minimum-wage increase to the bill are another reason the Republican
leadership would much rather postpone action on this bill until after the November
elections. If, as expected, both chambers delay action on the bill until after
the elections, it could be December before a final, compromise bill is approved.
It could be months, then, before NIH and its constituencies receive any further
signals on the agency’s final budget for 2007. (This analysis is one of a series
of AAAS R&D Funding Updates on FY 2007 congressional appropriations. The complete
series of AAAS R&D Funding Updates, including continually updated analyses
of R&D in FY 2007 appropriations, is available on the AAAS
R&D Web Site (http://www.aaas.org/spp/rd)
in the “FY 2007 R&D” or the “What’s
New” sections.)-
July 25, 2006
AAAS R&D Budget and Policy Program
1200 New York Avenue,
NW
Washington, DC 20005
(202) 326-6607
AAAS R&D Web site: http://www.aaas.org/spp/rd
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